Tag Archives: free books

I just finished the first draft of Steel Heart, book two in my litRPG series.

I finished the first book, Steel Soul, in June, and the second book today. That’s two months of writing. I’m getting a little faster.

Both books would be in the novella category at the moment, about 100 pages I think. Each is a full story on its own, but part of a bigger story. I’m going to go over them one more time, add in some details, some foreshadowing, and other plot things that I can add now (since I haven’t published them yet) which will add a few thousand more words to them both. I expect they will both still fall in the novella range, but I’m okay with that. A story should be as long as a story wants to be, and each of theses has a definite end point.

I’ve already started book three, which I might be calling “Steel Trap”, I haven’t decided yet. I also know this isn’t the final episode in the story. They are finally going to meet someone pulling all the strings, but it won’t be the end of the matter by any means. In fact…the game might start falling out into the real world. We’ll have to see. I’m still discovering the plot as I go as well.

Also, I wanted to let you know that The Ring is free this weekend. I won’t be putting short stories, or any litRPG into KU anymore, I’ll be taking them wide, so this will be he last time this particular story is available for free for a while. I will probably make a few of my short stories perma-free just because it might a few more eyes on my books, but for now I’m just writing more, and saving releasing them all at the end of the year. Look for that!

Currently ready to be edited:
Steel Soul
Steel Heart
Costume Shop

Working on:
Half Blood Sorceress book 2
Steel Trap

If I can get everything done….I’m working on it! I know that Costume Shop needs to come out on October 1st since it’s a Halloween story. I would like to release a book a month every month after that. I’ve got three so far!

I’m slowly pulling all of my short stories out of KU. I have a few reasons for that. First, the people using KU seem to like my novels more than my short stories. The biggest reason I used KU was for the free days so that I could advertise the free books and sometimes people would also pick up my other books. Secondly, I am getting closer to releasing my litRPG books. I think I’m going to be going wide with those books because it makes more sense, and I’m also worried about all the authors who have been having their accounts banned for “out of the ordinary activity.” I’d rather just not have that problem, and since it seems to be hitting litRPG authors the hardest I’m not willing to risk it with a brand new series, especially one I love this much.

Maybe I’m being a little paranoid, but that’s okay. The lovely thing about self publishing is that I can change my mind later down the road and try something different.

So, for now, I am using up all the free days available for my short stories. Here they are for this weekend:

I’m letting you know about them now because I’m taking all of my short stories out of KU and putting them up on other platforms. Now is your chance to grab them.

Now onto the rest of the post.

Every year I do a stats post to show what I’ve done and if I’ve improved or not. This year I’m also going to do a mid year check in. It’s a lot of stats and graphs, and chatting about writing so if you’re not interested in the numbers you might want to skip this one.

First, here are my weekly numbers for how much I’ve written. You’ll see the big spike at week 17. That’s the last week of April when I started writing my litRPG novel. Since then I’ve been writing more often, and more consistently. Plus I’m enjoying it again.

I’m going to admit it, writing last year was more of a struggle than it has been in a long time. This year I’ve written double every month, and in April when I decided to write something entirely different it changed completely. I started writing a lot, and looking forward to writing again. It was less of a struggle. And that, all on it’s own, showed me that I was on the right track.

But all the improvement I’ve done it hasn’t touched on 2015/2016. They were my best writing years so far. During that time I wrote the Witch’s Trilogy, and started my Half Blood Sorceress series. During 2017 I finished the first Half Blood Sorceress novel, and published a few short stories…but it was a struggle.

This year I started with book two in the Half Blood Sorceress series, and shifted to the litRPG. That shift has been a breath of fresh air. I even feel like I can go back to book two in my Half Blood Sorceress series to complete it. And that’s what I would like to do over the rest of this year, and next year…Finish more of the things!

I’ve got a few short stories I want to finish and publish, but I really want to focus on the novels. I have two first in series out and the second in each of those series is just sitting on my computer. Waiting. So it’s time I change that.

Anyway, if you made it this far thank you for reading. I guess the moral of the story is follow your passions, they might lead you somewhere good. And if you’re stuck try something new, even if it’s just for a little while before going back to the original thing. It might get you unstuck.

Last night I finished editing two more chapters for Dragons Flame, and wrote the last chapter. That last chapter had gone incomplete for a while. But this get’s me even closer to the end of the writing.

I also did a bunch of newsletters to let people know about the free short stories this weekend. If you’re interested you can find them here: Small Bites 1 and Hidden Treasures for free this weekend, and Witch’s Sacrifice is back on sale for 99 cents, along with most of my short stories being 99 cents.

But no progress on the declutter front yesterday. Life is about balance, trying to find that sweet spot of work, chores, family and everything else you have going on in your life. And so I’m trying to do that. I know I work from 12:30 to 10:30 five days a week, including the commute to and from. I know that I have some time in the evenings with Gregg. And I know that in the morning I am carving out five minutes for this blog post. The other things, like writing and reading, and playing a game, or decluttering my life…those all take second fiddle to the facts of keeping a roof over our head, and spending time with my boyfriend so we don’t feel like we’re ignoring one another.

Some days I wish I could go back to being a house wife. I had a lot more time then, and would sometimes spend weeks just doing spring cleaning. Sometimes you have to spend a lot of time to find all those little nooks and crannies where soup or spaghetti found their way. Especially when you have toddlers.

Maybe I don’t have toddlers anymore, but I do have a house filled with stuff.

I love reading, and I have a horrible habit of filling my kindle with books, many of which I might not get to read. But every time I open the cover I know there will be something amazing to find inside. And I want to share that experience, that love of finding diamonds in the rough among the countless books. And maybe I hope some of my stories find their way into your favorites as well.

I’d also like to let you know about The Scarab Necklace and Footprints which are free this weekend. The Scarab Necklace is a look into what makes us tick, and what drives us insane. Footprints is about a young man dealing with a tragedy in his life, while also running from something in the woods.

I haven’t been posting a lot to my blog, but I should be. There are a lot of things going on that I should be updating people on.

One, last night I did a challenge with Bjorn on my twitch stream,then I posted a little video on the results, and showed off the helmet/mask set I made. I might stream a few creative things now and then, or more challenges with Bjorn. His twitch is also growing a lot lately.

I am on the home stretch with the first book in the Half Blood Sorceress series. Just have to reread it, clean up the chapters, and make sure everything makes sense. Then off to an editor.

Every weekend in April I will have two free short stories available on amazon. Just check back Friday through Sunday every weekend for new titles. I’m also hoping to publish something new this month. Keep your eyes out for that.

If you like art you might check out my instagram. I’ve been adding new drawings almost daily, andI think I might start doing something with them. Charms, stickers, pins, etc….

What else? Recovering from the car accident is going well. I have a new car, and you can find out more about that here.

I think that’s about it. More writing. More drawing. More just having fun.

It’s time for a HUGE give away. If you go HERE you can download more than fifty free books from various scifi, fantasy, and horror authors. There are even a few super hero books, and a couple YA books.

My book, Witch’s Sacrifice,is also available for free. Get it now, this is probably one of the few times I will offer it for free.

You can’t go wrong just by checking it out. Plus you can sign up for their roflcopter and try to win a free kindle. More free stuff! I know, it’s amazing!